welcome to the 13th annual conference on science, policy, and the environment, disasters in the environment. i'm the executive director of a national council of the science of the environment, and it is my distinct master of ceremonies for much of the conference. thank you for coming. lots of people are still outside, encourage them to come in and settle themselves down. super storm sandy, drought on agriculture, wildfires, the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear reactor accident in japan last year, haiti earthquake, the list is long and worrying. in 20 # 11, we had more disasters in the united states costing more than a billion dollars than ever. in fact, we had more expensive disasters, but not quite as many in 2012. the drought and the super storm were hugely, hugely expensive. disasters are happening with greater frequency, greater severity, and absolutely with many, many greater costs. we ray -- we are here over the next three days to work across traditional boundaries to connect scientists of all stripes with practitioners, with policymakers from the international to the local level with